But you just take a form here to kind of help direct things...

dio, if you are going to start a thread and expect interesting and stimulating answers, it might be better to put some more effort into it than one sentence plus a headline. Perhaps elaborate a bit on what it is you mean, rather than trowing out a term like samsara and expecting everyone to have the same idea of it.

Well I'll bite anyway Enoon. I'm not Buddhist particularly but I've spent a lot of time pondering Buddhist thought and tend to find Buddhist philosophy very nurturing.

That said I don't believe I'm out of Samsara and I would be suspicious of anyone that made that claim. Buddhism teaches us a lot of compassion and it talks a lot about illusion. It also teaches us that we are the thousand hands of the Buddha, that everything has Buddha nature, and that all that we see is the dharma body of the Buddha.

Or, to put it another way, that we're all connected. That we are one and that separation is an illusion.

Just as a pinched nerve in my neck can overwhelm me with pain a single being still suffering means that we're all still suffering.

As long as we're still stringing up people for being different, abusing the animals we use as food sources, and supporting labor practices that encourage people to literally work themselves to death in order to survive we are not out of Samsara. We are all suffering.

That said I do believe that mindfulness and compassion are the ways out of Samsara. But I don't think it's about the individual. Yes, we all must do our part. Practice more kindness. See ourselves in each other. But it's a process. It's a realization and an understanding that we must come to together. And it's going to take time and patience.

Individual work can help me become more aware of these things and more at peace with the process. It can take away the weight of the world and replace it with the simple realization that kindness and compassion goes a long long way because the truth of seeing myself in someone else is simply more powerful than the illusion of seperation. But it can never quite the pain I feel in my gut when I recognize myself in someone else and feel the pain they feel.

That's just my opinion anyway.

I am no bodhisattva. Anyone truly out of samsara....is probably an enlightened master, a secret cheif, a Buddha or an angel--and is no longer on our plane. I've met gurus, monks from Tibet, shamans and what-not. I do not think that any of them were truly out of samsara.

As long as one man is imprison or enslaved I am not truly free. We's all connected, up in here.

Is that where the outlet mall is? Because that is a big parking lot, and it all looks the same. I don't know, google maps maybe?
I hate the suburbs, so easy to get lost.

No, you're thinking of the place by the movie theatre and the Whole Foods. The outlet mall where people pretty routinely get stuck is Naraka. It takes forever to get out there. They're near each other though.

OT: Anyone who thinks that they are out of samsara is almost certainly still trapped there.

Blessings
~ND

Hahahaha. All this buddhism would not have been necessary if we had google maps back then.

OT: I do not feel like i'm out of Samsara myself. But I do sometimes have the feeling that i am acting/responding in accord to a higher order of self that IS out of samsara.

Sorry

I thought the meaning of the word samsara is something commonly understood. It's a really common concept of eastern mythology. i consider it to be in the handful of most commonly known concepts. Like reincarnation, asana, pranayama, maya, vipassana, nirvana.

Can pain really be removed from the equation?

If you run on buddhist cosmology. An awareness out of samsara does not negate all the other places of existence. They are assumed to always be in parallel. Look here http://www.accesstoinsig...f/dhamma/sagga/loka.html

I think an awareness out of samsara feels all pain and anguish of all, and good of all, but there is inherently not a judgement given to it, not a perception or duality given to it, just the full instinctual embodiment of the inherent pattern to it all.

Not so commonly known concepts in western culture. All i knew from that list is reincarnation and nirvana. And i dont really have a full understanding of nirvana. I kind of just imagine it to be a heaven of the mind, whereas western religions offer a heaven of the body. I dunno. Lol.

Remember lovely Bodhisattva's:

I tend to assume psychedelic westerners are more familiar as psychedelia initially took a heavy bent through eastern mythology.

Also eastern mythology has already pre-existing words that describe many faucets of the psychedelic experience.
Like for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purusha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)

I honestly don't go into buddhism much as a religion, though I do feel there's a lot of parallels between buddhism and my own spiritual practices I consider a lot of religion to be a form of escape via over-intellectualising. I don't know for sure what 'it' is but I do feel that understanding it on an intellectual level isn't really the point.

So when I address the issue of Samsara I'm speaking only in practical terms.

"Samsara arises out of ignorance (avidya) and is characterized by dukkha (suffering, anxiety, dissatisfaction). In the Buddhist view, liberation from samsara is possible by following the Buddhist path." ~wikipedia

Here I would call ignorance the illusion that we're separate. To give an example when I raise an animal as a food source do I insure that that animal lives a life that I would want to live or do I just treat it as an end product or 'meat'. Or to use Kantian terms but to put them in a less humancentric light, we shouldn't treat living creatures as a means to an end but treat them as an end unto themselves.

And while I agree that pain can not be eliminated our relationship with pain can be changed. To get back to my neck analogy, because it's something I personally struggle with, I can view the pain in my neck as something to push down, kill, ignore, or I can hear it for what it is, a call from my body for love, nourishment, compassion, and attention. Likewise we can hear the pain on this planet as a call for love and nourishment or we can try to ignore it.

Pain, in a physical sense of the word, I agree will always be with us. But suffering exists only because of ignorance.

Or to put it in Christian terms, treat people how you would want to be treated, only here when I refer to people I'm really talking about every part of our eco-system, from the soil, to the cows, to the birds, to the trees.

I don't think it's an accident that the Buddha found enlightenment while meditating under a tree anymore than I think it's an accident that people in the Amazon talk to plants. The earth is alive. We've just been choosing not to listen and ignoring the pain we inflict upon our brothers and sisters. Until we wake up and see that we're all interconnected, that we're cells in a much larger body, Samsara will continue.

At least that's my opinion.

Actually, to use a more common analogy. It's like cancer. As long as we see ourselves as separate from the life on this planet we cling to our individual lives and cause mass damage to the system as a whole in the process. Cancer works in a similar way, the cell signals that allow the cell to let go of life quit working properly and the cell struggles to survive long after it should let go.

I believe this idea of 'eternal life' is part of Samsara and that it operates much like cancer operates in the body. And much like cancer it's something that spreads from one cell to another and that needs to be completely removed before we can be sure that the body will make a full recovery. So until we've all overcome this idea of clinging to our 'individual' lives I believe Samsara will continue.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that Ayahuasca seems to have cancer fighting properties and also helps people to see themselves as part of a much larger whole But that's a whole other can of worms that should probably have it's own thread if it doesn't already.